Tag: save money

Happy New Year everyone!! I am beyond excited to start off the new year and I hope you are too! Did you have fun ringing in 2017 last night? Draz and I were at my parents celebrating our family Christmas a little late, so that was our excitement for the night. It was a great time!

I have so many thoughts, plans and hopes for 2017, some of which I will be sharing with you all soon! But for now, I want to focus on the one thing that makes my week work….meal prep! Meal prep is literally the only way that my week functions. With it, I can focus on the things that truly matter to me. I have a lot going on, so if I want to still be able to spend time with Draz (which I do :-P), then I don’t want to be worrying about what we are having for dinner!

For this week’s meal prep, I kept things pretty simple. With the busy nature of the holidays, I didn’t want to worry about spending too long prepping stuff for the coming week. Along with that, Draz and I both wanted to keep this one especially budget-friendly! The holidays can be expensive and groceries are one of the areas that you can save the most in! So I aimed to plan for meals that we already had some of the ingredients and that what we didn’t have was also budget friendly.

One of the things that I love about this potato soup is how quick it is to make! But along with that, it is so filling and just perfect for these cold winter days here in Iowa. I did make a couple changes to the recipe to make it a little healthier

I substituted unsweetened almond milk for the heavy cream called for in the recipe

Instead of sour cream, I used plain Greek yogurt

The only thing I wish I had done differently was at the end of the recipe when I added in the last few ingredients. Instead of just adding in the three ingredients to the slowcooker, next time I will probably whisk the flour into the almond milk first, and then add the mixture to the slowcooker. This time it took a lot of work to get those little lumps of flour mixed in :-/

For the casserole, I only made a few small changes.

I upped the amount of broccoli a bit. I think it ended up being around 2 1/2 c total

Instead of shredded cheddar, I used a shredded fiesta mix. It’s what I had on hand and it worked out great!

I sprinkled in some red pepper flakes right before adding the broccoli.

At the end of the recipe, instead of broiling it for a little bit, I baked it in the oven. Bake uncovered, at 400 for 10-15 minutes.

Tracking macros? Here is the macro breakdown of our two main dishes, using MyFitnessPal:

Want to follow along? Get your free downloadable grocery list with everything you need to make this week’s main dishes here:

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What are you making for your meal prep this week? I would love to hear your thoughts, so please leave a comment below!